National Geographic goes green and makes me sick

Just in time for Earth Day, in today's mail was a big, frickin' overnight package from the National Geographic Channel. Inside the big frickin' package was a compact flourescent lightbulb, lovingly wrapped in about a yard of bubble wrap, plus a cardboard box, and a massive color brochure for NGC's new series "Human Footprint," which attempts to depict the total lifetime consumption of an average American, all in one shot.

To do this, they gathered together 3,796 diapers, 13,056 pints of milk (pints? Seriously? Why not drams or picoliters or something?), 43,371 cans of soda (my personal count would be double that), 12,888 oranges (that seems like a major overestimate) and 5,442 hot dogs.

They also say the average person reads about 5,054 newspapers, which, by my math, is just under 14 years worth of the good ol' daily Gazette. If that's a lifetime of newspaper reading, I really need to go back to school for that horticulture degree.

The whole endeavor has a "destroy the village in order to save it" feel. I mean, what's next, they're going to ship every TV writer in America an elephant to vividly convey the plight of the African rainforest?

Par for the course, though. The phrase "more money than sense" was invented to describe TV studios.